Feeding Dog

Most people get their first dog as a puppy. It should be properly weaned by the time you take it home, and the simplest way of feeding a new puppy is to give it four feeds a day, the first and the last consisting of baby cereal mashed up in warm milk. The other two feeds, at lunchtime and teatime, ought to be a mixture of canned puppy food mixed with rusk. If for some reason you cannot get canned puppy food, you can use canned dog food provided you sprinkle bone meal onto it. Do not, feed the little dogs on meat alone as it is low in calcium.At about twelve weeks you should find that the puppy no longer requires four meals and at this time one of the cereal and milk meals can be dropped. At six months you can omit the other, and three months after that you must decide whether you would prefer your dog to have one meal a day, or two.

Do not get into the habit of letting the dog eat between official mealtimes or of feeding it tidbits, such as sweets or biscuits. Nor should you feed scraps of food from the table when you are eating and never, ever let it lick up leftovers from the plates. There is nothing wrong with feeding any lean bits of left-over meat to the dog in his dish at his next meal. If the puppy has left his meal,remove it after half an hour. Keep to a regular feeding routine and always leave the food dish in the same place. It does not matter what sort of dish you use except that if your dog has long, dangly ears the dish should be a narrow one so that his face can fit into it while his ears hang outside, because if he gets food all over them dermatitis can result. You have several choices when you come to feeding an adult dog but simply feeding it on meat is just not an adequate diet.

The great advantage to commercial dog foods is that they contain all that your dog needs. The commonest diet for a single pet dog is undoubtedly canned food, but many dog owners have not realized that some of these are complete diets containing cereal while others are just meat; so check the can, and supplement the meat with dog biscuit, either mixed in or served separately .Alternatives to canned food are either semi-moist or dry foods, but if you use these do make sure that there is an ample supply of water.

It is not necessary to give a dog a bone, but if you do, only buy beef bones and keep an eye on the dog while he is enjoying them. Chops and bones from poultry are positively dangerous, due to the danger of splintering.

If you wish to make your own dog food, boil some rice with meat that contains a bit of fat, and which you have minced. Ready made mince is useless as it has far too high a fat content. Measurethe uncooked rice and add about half that amount of meat. Whenthe meal has cooled, add a scrap of corn oil, bonemeal, iodised salt and a rather larger quantity of raw liver and mix the lottogether.

One of the well-known television chefs was saying the other day that a fan had come up to him at some reception to compliment him. She particularly liked one cake recipe of his and had been making it regularly for five years; her only complaint was that it contained too much lemon. The chef, relating this story, wonderedwhy the woman had never thought of using less lemon. No recipeis meant to be followed slavishly and this applies equally to dogfood, so if your dog is lactating or obese or old, adjust the recipeto suit the circumstance.

Someone keeping a dog for the first time is frequently concerned about how much to feed and is confused at the ambiguous answers. But the answer does depend on so many factors, such as the size of the dog, how much exercise it gets - even on how warm the day is. There are tables for working out all this but play it by ear and you are not likely to go wrong. If thedog starts to put on weight, cut down slightly on the carbohydrates. If the dog is frantic for food at mealtimes, give it a bitmore, but if you are still not happy here are some typical figuresfor a very small dog such as a Chihuahua and an enormous great thing like an Old English Sheepdog.

Pregnant bitches will require about one and a half times these amounts. When they have had their puppies and are nursing them,this should be increased to three or four times the above figures, while the puppies themselves, when they are weaned, require twiceas much.